I am the emotional shock absorber in this house and I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending that role doesn’t injure me too

Dear Delyara, I do it automatically now. One child is upset, the other is irritable, my husband is tired, there is a money problem, something practical has gone wrong, a phone rings, dinner is late, and suddenly I am there in the middle translating, softening, adjusting, keeping the whole emotional weather from turning into a storm large enough to drown everybody. I know I am good at it. That is not the same as it being harmless. The cost is that my own feelings often get delayed until long after everyone else has been stabilised. Sometimes they don’t get room at all. They turn into tight shoulders, strange tiredness, resentment, tears in the kitchen over fruit or towels or school forms that were never really about fruit or towels or school forms. I am tired of being the system. And I do not yet know how to stop.